Cape Town – The Stormers were eventually able to grind their way to a bonus-point victory over London Irish, but it came at some cost, with star flyhalf Manie Libbok now ruled out of Saturday’s Champions Cup clash against Clermont Auvergne in Cape Town.
The Springbok pivot had to leave the Brentford Community Stadium pitch in the 18th minute on Sunday after Irish fullback Ben Loader made direct contact to his head in a tackle, which saw the No 15 receive a straight red card from French referee Ludovic Cayre.
The home side’s head coach Les Kiss expressed his frustration with the decision, saying he was “flabbergasted” by it, but the TV replays showed the clear head contact.
The immediate aftermath of that incident is that Libbok won’t feature in Saturday’s game against Clermont at Cape Town Stadium at least (7.30pm kickoff).
“When the medics came back on the radio, the call was that they wouldn’t even carry on with the HIA… It was a pretty nasty knock, so he will be out for a little while,” Stormers coach John Dobson said.
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Unreal line speed from @THESTORMERS and @RuhanNel7 has a little juggle before running it in under the posts 🤹♂️#HeinekenChampionsCup pic.twitter.com/cc8hYLtdAJ
“Manie got a knock to his head, he failed his HIA – it’s a concussion, and that’s where we are. He will probably have to go through the whole protocol.
“There are various tests that he needed to do, and the criteria one is the one he failed straight away. That means he is concussed, and then he goes through the rest of the protocol now – and that means he won’t play next week. How long he is out for beyond next week depends on how he does in tests on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday.”
Flank Deon Fourie also got a blow to the head in a dangerous ruck clean-out by Irish replacement tighthead prop Ciaran Parker early in the second half, which also resulted in a red card. But Dobson said the Stormers No 6 had not been concussed, although he was “a little bit stiff”.
“I would differentiate slightly between Ben Loader’s thing, which is a high-speed rugby action, and that one where you are a jackal – like happened with Deon Fourie getting hit – that’s where we’ve got to protect players, because we can control that to a larger degree than maybe we can control Ben Loader’s head-clash situation,” Dobson sad.
⛈ @THESTORMERS earned their first #HeinekenChampionsCup away victory with a win against London Irish.
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“On the top of the head like that, that is where guys are really exposed. But we do have a problem in rugby with that… It was a cracking game until the numbers went down, and I felt we got poorer. Irish played the only way they could play, and they dominated possession.”
Libbok was unable to continue, and it had a significant effect on the Stormers’ performance as they battled to find their rhythm on attack for the rest of the game.
Junior Bok captain Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu initially went into the playmaker role, but later dovetailed there with fullback Damian Willemse.
“It was probably another error on our part… not putting him to fullback, where he had trained most of the time. Damian was actually the reserve flyhalf, and we had put him (Feinberg-Mngomezulu) straight to 10. So, I think he struggled too, and once we put him to fullback, where he had trained, we were much, much better,” Dobson said.
“Obviously the cards changed the shape of the game – in the first half, I thought it looked like a pretty good game. I was pretty happy with where we were, and it was really two teams who wanted to play good rugby and have a go at each other.
“It often happens in rugby: when you get the numbers reduced, the whole picture of the game changes, and I thought we were really poor in that. But as exactly poor as we were, London Irish just kept the ball and put us under pressure, and forced us into ill-discipline and mistakes.
“So, it wasn’t the product that we probably wanted for growing rugby, South African participation and all that stuff.
“But for the outcome, we will take it every day of the week, because London Irish are a really, really good side.”
Points-Scorers
London Irish 14 – Tries: Penalty Try, Danilo Fischetti. Conversion: Rory Jennings (1).
Stormers 28 – Tries: Penalty Try, Ruhan Nel, Suleiman Hartzenberg, Angelo Davids. Conversions: Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (3).
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